


The Lonely Barricade

by Cers



Series: Essek Week 2020 [6]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Consecuted!Essek, Disturbing Themes, Essek Week, Les Mis Inspiration, M/M, Please read A/N first, Post-Campaign, Prompt: Possibilities, This is not a happy fic Reader, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23470237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cers/pseuds/Cers
Summary: Essek returns to the Xhorhaus after the final battle. They were not successful in this timeline.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Series: Essek Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683388
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57
Collections: Essek Week





	The Lonely Barricade

**Author's Note:**

> Reader, please note that this is a very dire piece. There's little happiness in it, and I would urge you to read it when in a safe frame of mind. It's not the most tragic writing ever, but it _is_ affecting. There are mature themes present in this, which you can see below. Roll mouse over symbol for popup text : Trigger Warnings !  
> If you cannot use this feature, then there are warnings provided in the End Notes. Love you <3

The thoroughfares of Rosohna are destroyed- erupted and broken. Stone shards angle up sharply in a crude replica of the Barbed Fields to the north. Similar sights now decorated the wastes of the world whenever and wherever he went. 

He follows the recognisable route through crumbled streets and wynds, the path familiar in an echoing shadow of his mind. The walls separating what used to be the Firmaments and the Gallimaufry are naught but an outline now. The city used to creep out into the Ghostlands, he recalls, trying to reclaim it. Now the world as he knows it was all Ghostlands. 

A dark trail follows him as he hobbles along with careful, shaky steps. His backpack is lighter than when he started this journey. It had taken a long time to get here this time round. The weight on his bones was also considerably less. Even now vitality seeped from him. He was nearly there. Just a little longer. 

**_There's a grief that can't be spoken,_ **

The Lucid Bastion - what is left of it - still tries to stand centrally, proudly. Defiantly. Arrogantly. For all the good it had been worth. 

The sky was no longer perpetual night, that magic long lost with the fall of the Dynasty. Instead a mirthless weight of hopeless grey blankets the city, and now the citadel he once called 'home.'

He limps on by, sparing it nothing more than a numb glance. He had somewhere more important to be. 

**_There's a pain goes on and on._ **

He pauses at a crossroads. Left would take him to the leftover Conservatory, all knowledge lost. Past there would eventually be his towers, when they _were_ his towers. They'd been hollow wrecks previously. He has no idea how long the city has lain in ruins now. 

History-keeping was the last thing on anyone’s mind these last few decades and centuries. He turns right. 

**_Empty chairs at empty tables,_ **

What was once a bustling metropolis of culture and arcane science, flawed and blind as it was, now mirrors depictions of lost civilisations from ancient textbooks. 

Crumbled walls, disturbed earth. 

No people. Not anymore. Not for a long time. Big groups were dangerous, attracted attention. Nomadicity was the norm now. 

He hasn't seen a book in many years. 

**_Now my friends are dead and gone._ **

Survival had been the goal for him. For all of this life, especially. Born to a thinning tribe camped in the Penumbra range, he had grown up with skills necessary to survive such a trek here. Mostly. 

Gaining memories of better and previous times amplified the desolation and hollowness of the existence he now experienced. Once he realised what it all meant, that he wasn't going crazy, he packed up and left his tribe the next day. 

To arrive here. Alone.

At the Xhorhaus. 

**_Here they talked of revolution,_ **

There was no gate to open, he had removed it before. No fence or hedge. The stable had collapsed, a faint outline of its foundation visible in the overgrowth. He steps into the garden.

Like most of the buildings, there was little left of the Xhorhaus. Most of the roof was gone, windows hollowed. One front corner of the building had dissipated, opening up into what was the dining area and an upstairs bedroom. 

He walks around the outside of house, following familiar faded footsteps.

The tower had crumbled some time ago, moss growing more now over the stonework and rubble very comfortably. 

A tender investigation of where their tree had fallen- all that remained now was the skeleton of a log -a sharp unexpected cut reveals broken glass shards. They were no longer glowing brightly, long fluttered out. 

There had been a few weak ones left, the first time. 

**_Here it was they lit the flame,_ **

The door had long since rotted, creating an easy entry point. It doesn’t take much effort to clear away any overhanging debris, and he steps through the crooked threshold. He nearly stumbles entering, clinging to cracks in the wall. 

Gone are the days of floating and magic. Brute strength was all that mattered now. _Survival_. It didn’t bother him as much, it was all he had known this life. Until it wasn’t. 

The foyer was paler, more faded. A ghost of its former image. He remembers the vivid lilac of the wallpaper, now a jaundiced parchment-yellow. 

He moves to the study. 

**_Here they sang about tomorrow, and tomorrow never came._ **

The blood from his hand drips slowly in his wake, adding to the crimson trail marking his presence. 

Furniture, what little they had collected, still lay lopsided. Tattered, broken. Remnants of papers, and books, and dusty component jars circled the floor where they had lain undisturbed. Until now. 

He moves through, glass cracking beneath his boots and curled page imprints mired into the rotted floorboards. If he were to look carefully enough, he may have found imprints of boots previously passing through here. But he doesn't, so it is missed. 

He runs a finger across the single, lonely desk. Dust kicks up. It lands on the toppled chair beside him. 

**_From the table in the corner,_ **

More paper, weighted down beneath a stone against the winds occupying the house now, sat on the surface. He pulls them away. They crumple at his fingertips. Blood spatters onto the desk. He knows what they say anyway. He wrote it in another lifetime. Were it whole, there would have been tear drops dotted across. His pinched face is dry now. 

Shards of a cat figurine crunch under his heel, unseen. 

He looks out the window- its decayed remains anyway - to the desolate view. His gaze lingers, recalling what the view used to look like. The concerned faces of the neighbours, the local children trying to sneak a peak at the unusual new folk. If only their worries had ended up only being that big.

Unfeeling, he leaves the study. The bedroom attached he ignores. He long vowed to never open that door again. There are some memories he does not want tainted. 

**_They could see a world reborn,_ **

The training room was as barren as expected. No longer containing a patched up training dummy, complete with painted silly face and all. Now it stood uninhabited. A pile of rags and wooden bones sit unnoticed in the corner. 

Faint writing was still visible on the wall across from him - a known blue hand having written “-o guys! K-ck som- a-” and the rest was lost to time. He remembers partially-the lettering was black, blue, and green in honour of the most frequent users of this room. 

There is a tarnished throwing star embedded into the wall below it, next to several unoccupied holes. It sags a little, the wood it was embedded in loosening and collapsing slowly. The painted targeting circle it was in had been visible last time. It's not anymore without severe scrutiny. Even then he's not sure he sees it with his new eyes or his mind's eye.

It takes some effort, and a few more hissing slices to his palms, but he unearths the weapon and twirls it in his slick fingers. 

Beauregard had had one of the strongest backbones he had ever known. Her mettle was unmatched, and her resolve harder than adamantine. 

And he still remembers the sound of that fragile spine cracking in two. 

The throwing star pricks his finger, and a globule of dark liquid peaks out. He pockets the weapon and returns to the foyer. 

**_And they rose with voices ringing,_ **

He stays in the foyer for a few moments longer, not realising just how often he had stood here in his previous life. It was here that he was greeted most by them. The invitations to dinner, to join them adventuring, to stay the night in a secret hushed whisper- 

He looks to the front door. As expected, a patch of splintered wood has pulled out above it as though something had been torn from it. 

Laying underneath the door remains was a spread of copper pipes. 

**_And I can hear them now-_ **

The doorway leading to the hot tub is open. Or destroyed. He doesn’t know. Whatever was left of the room has been lost, a small mound of debris that opened up to the collapsed tower was all he saw. 

He goes to the kitchen, reminded of a conversation had with warmth, water, and wine. The first of many. But not enough. They should have had more. 

**_The very words that they have sung_ **

There is nothing left. No carefully organised counters or cupboards. No cheeses or biscuits or homegrown vegetables. Where a set of small clay jars had once nested on a counter, dusty chunks now occupied. It’s all right, he thinks. There’s one left upstairs. But still there were no more dried tea leaves. No mismatched crockery. Or cat and weasel scurrying about underfoot. 

Not like their last night here before-

**_Became their last communion_ **

The battle had been short. Impossible. Horrific. Over. 

What flashes he remembered came in cutting strokes and painful outbursts. Sometimes he would awaken in a cold sweat on the ground, gasping for breath and calling names of people he didn't know in this life. Other times he’d come to doubled over his own vomit, unable to differentiate memory from present. In his worst fits (as his tribe had dubbed them), he would run and tire, jumping at the first sound with hands outstretched reactively, arcane words on his lips, and yet nothing happening. 

Shadows and the night seemed so much more sinister after that. And he never thought that possible. 

But there was one thing he was proud of, in all these broken pieces of remembrances he was putting together. He joined them, at the end. He fought his _damnedest_ , with every fibre of his eventually-broken body he fought. 

They all did. 

In a corner there is dried husks of moss and mushroom. It appeared to have grown wild - for a time. It had been dying before. Now it seems to be ancient. Picking at it causes some of it to break away in hard clumps. It joins the throwing star in his pocket. 

He exits the kitchen. 

**_On this lonely barricade, at dawn._ **

He was not the last to die, during that 'great' battle, but had been the second-to-last. Selfishly - repulsively - he is glad he didn't see _him_ die. That doesn't mean he has wept many a times late at night, at the thought of his beloved witniessing _his_ death _._ He doesn't remember much of dying that first time, but he does remember a searing pain, and screams of someone unknown. It might have been his own, or it might have been _his_. He'll never know. He's not sure he wants to. 

Jester had been first to go down- a clear, strong link in the Mighty chain that they were. 

He swallows rising bile remembering how targeted she had been. And what had been left as a result. Caduceus had run to get her up. 

He never made it to her. 

He clutches his wet stomach, willing the churning to cease, and climbs the splintered stairs. Soon. Just a little bit longer. There's an order first. There's a ritual.

**_Oh my friends, my friends forgive me-_**

His consecution was a mockery now. A vile and earned punishment for his past sins. Anamnesis had been a horrifying experience to say the least. Memories had come in cracked, crooked nightmares for many months and years without an experienced Umavi to guide him. His tribe labelled him sick in the head. He wasn't, he knew that now. He was, instead, permamently fractured in his soul. 

The terrors that he and his current kin avoided through the day were nothing compared to what awaiting him at night. Rest was no longer a safe haven for him. 

He was his own worst punishment. 

**_That I live and you are gone._**

His hand is no longer bleeding. So he picks at it until it starts absently. The trickle resumes. 

There is little left of upstairs. Most of the walls are still upright, if not a few crumbled. Windows had long been blown out by the devastation. The roof is nothing but snapped rafters. 

Fjord’s room was rather bare. Some meagre furniture remains, furnishings long disintegrated. A holey, and expected, aged leather bag sits unmoving on the rotted mattress. He already knows the contents.

Fjord had been slow in accepting him to the Nein, and with good reason. But they had eventually seen eye-to-eye - and just in time. The man was just beginning to make his way in the world as himself, upright and confident in his own actions. He had performed amazingly. 

The righteous anger in Fjord's cries after the clerics went down still reverberates in his sleep. They throw themselves around in his skull, those furious screams, still enraged and thirsty for revenge after all these years. And they always end with a gurgling sudden stop. 

A handful of seashells, some broken, some not, lay scattered at the floor of a chest of drawers. He picks up the biggest whole one. It’s not quite palm-sized, but it’s a conch and colourful compared to the powdery beige blanketing everything. The last one had a pink-sheen. This has a slight green-blue hue to it. He wraps his hand over it tight, feeling the grooves and edges. When he loosens his grip, it is smeared crimson. 

It joins the other trinkets in his pocket. 

**_There's a grief that can't be spoken,_ **

He looks into the next door. Two beds- one blue and one pink. Or were. Dust and debris so thick it was all bleached in sepia tones. Frozen in time in a monotone mockery. The blowing breeze causes weak movement. He sees the tattered ribbons tied around a bed post. 

He takes another one- a hazy green this time- wraps it around his wrist, and leaves. 

**_And there's a pain goes on and on_ **

He had never seen the mural with his own eyes. Jester had only told him about it. Yasha mentioned she would show him when they returned. The dinner they had on that last night was a jittery affair after hours of planning and message-sending and final co-ordination, so he agreed to a raincheck. She never did get to show him. 

He remembers seeing the rage and light leave her eyes, wings- white and irradiant- burning up like flashpaper. All that had been left of her was ash. 

All that was left here now, was a ruin. The top three-quarters were lost to time, fallen into the hallway or bedroom. He pulls the rubble away to the side, coughing at the once again disturbed grime. Swiping at the wall with his palms he finally sees it. 

It’s taken him years, maybe even decades or more. But he sees it again. 

He doesn’t know how long he sits there admiring what faded work he can see. But when he stands up, there’s a small brick in his grasp, with a bright yellow flower on it, and a hidden dick. 

**_Phantom faces at the window,_ **

The ‘happy room’ had been converted into an alchemy station, moved up from the library. Veth preferred that, she had said. And it allowed a bit more peace and quiet for the study, he had been told with a sly wink. 

He had pretended not to know what she had meant. He hadn’t been having an illicit affair...things with him had just been very _new_. And private. And delicate. 

Of course now, after it all, it’s easier to say he wished he’d been more forthright with him. With _all_ of them. His love for them spanned lifetimes now. 

Nothing was left to show for it. Apparatus and notes and books all gone. 

A desk, slanted with one destroyed leg has a drawer open. He finds some shattered glass, a hole burned through the drawer bottom long ago. As well as a stoppered vial of acid. Caught in a vacuum, airtight and undisturbed. Mmm. He remembers not taking it last time. 

He pockets it anyway. 

She had fought so hard, living up to her moniker. ‘Brave’ was an understatement. She had come out from the shadows, and faced their enemy head on, tears in her eyes, and grief in her throat. 

She managed to cause the most severe harm before she splintered apart, her form shredding into a ghastly firework display of carnage . 

His feet knock a discarded walking stick on his hobbling way out of the lab. He didn’t need one this time. 

**_Phantom shadows on the floor!_ **

The War Room is gone. Time eventually claiming the house brick by brick. 

He imagines that there won’t be a house to visit next time. 

**_Empty chairs at empty tables where my friends will meet no more._ **

His last stop is the guest room. Surprisingly its frame had held up so far, the wall still mostly secluding it from his walk through the hallway. The door falls from the hinges this time when he opens it, collapsing in a loud heap and kicking up a dust storm. It only squeaked badly before. 

The room was mostly empty, they never did get around to kitting it out. It was on their lists of _Afterwards_. Things got in the way. They were going to gift it to him. But it didn't matter, whenever he stayed, he shared a bed anyway, for those few blessed nights he had. 

But right there, in the middle of the room, was a shrine. 

It was nothing more than a spread out cloth, encircled by slowly growing stacks of items and memories. But it was sacred to _him,_

**_Oh my friends, my friends don't ask me-_ **

This wasn’t his first trip here, and the evidence lay before him in a seemingly random assortment and collection. 

Carefully, he moves in. The floorboards creak warningly, but he carries on. He has a ritual to perform. 

**_What your sacrifice was for._ **

His previous bones are still there, heaped together on themselves, and there’s a certain morbidity there that he knows Caduceus would have appreciated. 

It doesn’t take much to gather them, and discard them to the corner.

With the others. 

The mantle is spread out, holey and worn. Its deep colour had given way to a colour so dull it was without name. No longer hiding him from the world, now it catches his last breaths and holds him safe at his chosen end.

So he can return to his friends. 

**_Empty chairs at empty tables_ **

The journey had been hard, there was no doubt of that. The beasts and horrors that tear through the world and veils now stalk and skulk. Years of being with his current tribe taught him how to mostly avoid being tracked, covering his scent. Some previous lifetimes were not so lucky. Not all of his attempts to travel here were successful. 

But coming to Rosohna had been ironcially treacherous, especially alone. His hand wasn’t the only thing that was bleeding on arrival, and he wonders if he’ll remember to look for the long, winding dark trail that recorded his journey through the house when he returns next. If he returns. 

Coming back these last few times- he still doesn't know how. There’s a hidden beacon somewhere around the city, but he cares not to find it. His consecution was his punishment. And he will endure it. Alone. For as long as the cycle endures.

And every single time, when clarity is reached, and understanding gained, he will make his way across hellscape and wastes to be in comfort. To sit, on an old tattered cloak, surrounded by his lonely barricade of memoirs, in the remains of the happiest place he had ever been. 

**_Where my friends will sing no more._ **

He takes out his findings from his pocket. These, his sacred relics. 

He was being punished, over, and over. 

For his treachery.

He places a seashell next to the pile of others. 

For his lies.

The mushroom crumbs are sprinkled into a cracked tea jar, missing its lid.

For his deceit.

The throwing star is placed on top of several of its companions. 

For his love.

The flower mural fragment slides next to a few others, the image incongruent and perfect.

For his failure. 

The vial rests atop a cracked leather journal, knocking the others as it rolls over. 

For his return. 

He unwraps the ribbon, and ties it onto another. The chain of them is long now. 

There was a rag, amongst the bones. It was half the length it used to be, and holier than the beacon that tormented him. It’s crusted with his old blood and tears, no longer the soft scarf that would sit around Caleb’s neck. 

Essek remembers sliding it off of him in hurried passionate kisses, discarding it away to the side of the study. 

It had been the first relic he found and treasured, all those reborn cycles ago. It was the last thing he had left of him. And in this life, and the next, and the _next_ , he would traverse the wastes of what used to be Xhorhas to clutch it once more, just to be close to him again. 

He closes his eyes, and curls up on his old mantle. His stomach wound has drenched his clothes now, seeping into the fabric below. It won’t be long. He recognises the feeling. This isn’t the first time he's died. It probably won’t be the last. But at least between now and next, he'll be at momentary peace, where the cycle begins anew.

But for now, at least he’ll die as he did the first time- surrounded by his friends. 

**_There's a grief that can't be spoken ..._ **

**Author's Note:**

> Triggers include: Self-harm (cutting/neglect), violent witnessed death of friends, calm suicidal thoughts, implied repeated suicide (by not healing/seeking help). 
> 
> Lyrics taken from Les Miserables stage production and film, this piece of work mostly inspired by the Ramin Karimloo recording as found on Youtube. 
> 
> Thank you for reading <3
> 
> Minor edits made: 4/4/20 for spelling and grammar


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